Magazine of the Bible Sabbath Association (BSA)

The History of Sabbath and Sunday

This book provides a brief overview of Sabbath keeping from Jesus until now. It shows that there have always been Christians keeping the Sabbath from the time of the original Apostles. Here is an excerpt from pages 23-24.

“Of the Christians of the British Isles, before the mission of Augustine to that country in about A.D. 596, we note that they had not been in subjection to Rome. When Augustine arrived he found the northern part well-nigh filled with Christians and Christian institutions….

Those Christians were Culdees, whose chief seat was the island of Iona, on the western coast of Scotland. Their chief missionary leader was Colomba (borth 543), and he was an observer of the seventh-day Sabbath. On this point we quote a standard Catholic author, Dr. Alvan Butler, who recorded some of Colomba’s dying words:

“Having continued his labors in Scotland thirty-four years, he clearly and openly foretold his death, and on SAtuirday the ninth of June said to his disciple Diermit: ‘This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest and such will it truly be for me; for it will put an end to my labors’” (Butler’s Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principle Saints, art. St. Colombo, A.D. 597).

Sabbath History Seventh Century to the Reformation

“Rome never succeeded in driving the Sabbath wholly from its dominions. We have reasons to believe that there have been Sabbath-keepers functioning in every century, some in the wilderness, and some in and around the Alps. In their time, they were known by such designations as Nazarenes, Cerinthians, Hypsistari, and later as Vaudois, Cathari, Toulousians, Albigenses, Petrobrusians, Passagii and Waldenses….”